The scene: Friday morning in a busy American
courtroom, suburb of a major U.S. city.

The players: A state judge on the bench, a divorced
father and his attorney at one table, and the divorced
mother, by herself, at the other table.

The history: The divorced couple had entered into an
agreement that their daughter would attend a certain
local school.

The issue: The mother now wants to pull the daughter
out of the school and enroll her elsewhere.

The mother nervously approaches the judge to make her
pitch. Hands shaking and voice quavering, she explains
that the girl is suffering terribly at this school
because of the foreign environment. "Nobody there
even speaks English, your honor," the woman
explains,
hastening to add that "I don`t mean that in a
prejudiced way at all. I`m not prejudiced. But it`s just
a
different culture, and my daughter is being
destroyed as a person. She`s not herself anymore,
acting in ways she never used to. She`s wetting
herself."

The judge listened carefully and replied that he
couldn`t decide the issue today because of an upcoming
hearing in the same case. The mother protested that
school—and her daughter`s return to the torture
chamber—was about to start. Sorry again, the judge said:
nothing I can do right now.

The mother ran from the courtroom, her face twisted
in tears.

But I`m sure that with a
little coaching, this woman could come to accept
that watching your child lose her mind, control of her
bodily functions and the happy American childhood that
is her birthright is but a growing pain as we grope
toward
Manifest Diversity.